Why Now Is The Best Time To Start A Blog
Blogging has become an increasingly popular way to communicate and share information online. More people than ever are using blogs as a way to connect with others and share their thoughts and ideas. This means that there is a growing audience for blogs, which provides more opportunities for bloggers to reach a wide range of people.
Blogging is very flexible and fits in with my busy schedule with taking care of kids and our home.
Blogs are relatively easy to set up and maintain. There are many free or low-cost blogging platforms available, such as WordPress which make it easy to get started.
Additionally, there are a lot of helpful resources, such as tutorials and guides, available online to help you through the process.
By blogging about topics that you are passionate about, you can develop relationships with like-minded people and learn new things.
Moreover, by providing useful information and insights on your blog, you can build a reputation as an expert in your field, which can lead to new opportunities, as well as build a nice little side hustle that can help pay for some of your expenses. Blogging about a subject that you know about is an excellent way to leverage your expertise.
Overall, there are many reasons why now is the best time to start a blog. If you have been thinking about starting a blog but have not done so yet, now is the time to take the plunge. You will not regret it!
Note: Affiliate links may be used in this post. I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you use my affiliate link. Full disclosure policy here
How Do I Start A Blog
Luckily for us there are literally tons of resources free and paid available to us on how to start a blog, so I won’t go super in detail here on how to do that. I will give a general outline and provide you with some good resources on more of the details of starting a blog for additional help.
Pick Your Niche
To start a new blog we need to answer a few questions first.
What is my blog going to be about?
You will need to do some preliminary brainstorming in order to figure out what niche you’re going to want to write about.
Again, I recommend that you fall back on your own knowledge and experiences to write about. The reason for this is that you are going to be blogging about this subject quite a lot and you will need to be able to come up with many different ideas to write on and you will need to somewhat like and enjoy what you’re writing about.
Website Hosting and Installing WordPress
The next step you will need to do is to purchase website hosting and install WordPress onto your domain name.
I use Bluehost for my web hosting service and I recommend you use them also. Whats great about Bluehost is that you can get web hosting, a free domain address and a free SSL certificate for just $2.95/month.
To me that is a great deal and their service in my opinion has been really responsive.
Another great thing about Bluehost is that if you’re not sure how to build a website or are wanting to outsource building a website, you can pay an additional fee and Bluehost will do all the work designing you a great website.
This is purely optional though as it’s not super tough to build a great WordPress site.
Step by Step Process To Build Your Blog
- You will need to purchase web hosting
- Then purchase a domain name or already provide a domain name to assign to your web hosting.
- Install WordPress on that domain name. Installing WordPress is super easy, especially if you’re using Bluehost as your web host. Bluehost provides you with a one button installation.
- Once you have WordPress installed on your domain, you will want to choose a blog theme. A blog theme is simply the orientation and what your blog is going to look like. There are free WordPress themes and there are paid themes to choose from. At first you might be tempted to pay for a theme but it is entirely up to you. I would pick something simple to use at first and not go spend a bunch of money for a theme upfront. Once you’re able to get your blog up and running with content then maybe you can invest in a paid theme. For now just choose the default theme that is already given in WordPress.
- You will then want to familiarize yourself with the WordPress blog interface.
- Then you’re ready to post content to your site.
Now I know this is a super basic outline for starting a WordPress blog but it will get you up and running pretty quickly.
That is what I’d like for you to take away from this post is that it is often better to get started than it is for you to know everything about blogging before you start.
Don’t get bogged down with analysis paralysis and never start your blog. It’s far more important for you to start and make progress than it is for you to wait until every detail is perfect. It will make it easier for you to learn as you go and you will be far more motivated to continue as you start to see progress!
How To Monetize Your Blog
Now once you have gone through all the work of starting a blog, creating content for that blog and now you’re getting visitors to that site, it’s time to think about how to make money with that blog.
There are a few different ways that you can monetize your blog. One way is to sell advertising space on your site.
You can also join affiliate programs and get paid for promoting products on your blog.
Another option is to sell products or services directly from your blog.
Whatever method you choose, you will want to make sure it’s something that will work well with your blog’s content and audience.
Blog Advertising
One of the simplest methods for monetizing your blog is to sell advertising or to join an ad network. You can set up a link on your site with pricing in order to directly sell advertising on your site.
This is possible to do but this definitely takes more work. To do this you would need to:
- Set up an advertising rate sheet
- Designate ad space on your site
- Create a digital link for charging customers
- You will need to do a substantial amount of advertising and promotion
This method of ad revenue is good if you’re trying to sell “billboard” style ads. The other method of ad revenue, which I like more is by joining an ad network.
There are lots of ad networks available to bloggers.
One of the main differences in ad networks are their barrier to entry. Most of these ad networks will only allow you to join if you have a certain amount of monthly page views.
If you are a new blogger with a new site then you wont be able to join most of the ad networks until you’ve built up your website traffic.
Google Adsense is one of the easiest ad networks to join because they don’t require you to have very much traffic. However, as a downside, the amount of ad revenue you earn is very small per visitor and in some cases you may not earn any money unless the user clicks on an ad on your web page.
There are other ad networks available that pay a substantially higher amount per visitor but they require you to have higher amounts of monthly web traffic.
- Ezoic (10,000 monthly pageviews)
- Mediavine (50,000 monthly pageviews)
- AdThrive (100,000 monthly pageviews)
Even though these traffic numbers are much higher in order to join, when you eventually are able to join them you will make substantially better money through ads.
In some cases, bloggers are able to make almost a full time income each month just by running ads on their websites.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of online marketing in which a business rewards an affiliate for each new customer or sale generated by the affiliate’s marketing efforts.
Affiliates can be individuals or companies who sign up with the business to promote its products or services in exchange for a commission on any resulting sales or leads.
For example, if an affiliate marketing company signs up with a business to promote its products on the affiliate’s website, any sales or leads generated by the affiliate’s marketing efforts will result in a commission for the affiliate marketing company.
Affiliate marketing is an excellent way for bloggers to reach new customers and generate sales, and it can be a relatively low-cost way for affiliates to earn commissions.
Affiliate marketing programs are typically free to join, and affiliates can earn commission on sales or leads generated by their own marketing efforts or through referrals from other affiliates.
Affiliate marketing is a popular way for businesses to expand their reach and generate new sales, and it can be an effective way for affiliates to earn commissions.
How To Get Started In Affiliate Marketing
Getting started with affiliate marketing is simple. Think about some of the products and services that you already are using and like.
Search out some of these products online and see if they offer an affiliate program. You would be surprised as I was that most products offered whether digital or physical often offer an affiliate program.
For instance, one of the most popular e-commerce websites ever (Amazon.com), offers an affiliate program that you can sign up for that allows you to get affiliate links and post them on your website. When someone clicks on your link, they are re-directed to an Amazon.com page that has that item. The customer then purchases the item and you get a small commission for the sale.
Affiliate marketing has huge potential for making you serious money each and every month. In fact, the blogger for Making Sense of Scents, Michelle Schroeder-Gardner has reported that she has easily made more than $50,000 per month in affiliate marketing sales! That is life changing type of money.
Steps To Get Started Using Affiliate Marketing
- Join an affiliate products network
- Receive your custom affiliate link
- Write a helpful blog post on a subject you know about and where you can post about the product you would like to promote
Thats really all there is to the process of affiliate marketing. You write content on your blog and post links within that content promoting other peoples products.
For a more detailed step by step breakdown for succeeding with affiliate marketing I recommend you check out the program through Create and Go, Launch Your Blog Biz. It does an awesome job of walking you through setting up your blog and implementing these monetization strategies.
Course Creation
The next step you can use to monetize your blog would be to create your own course or service. This can be a labor intensive process of planning, creating a framework for what is going to be in your course, editing the material. Then you will need to decide on whether you will publish the information in an ebook format or you will create a video course.
If you are wanting to move forward with creating your own course or class I would recommend you checking out the program at Create and Go, Six Figure Course Creator.
I hope that this information has been helpful to you and that you are inspired to launch your own online blog business. I know this has been a lot of information but if you break it up in smaller sections and take it one step at a time you will succeed! I wish you lots of luck!